Gmail marked 15th birthday with release of Email Scheduling and other new features

Gmail is 15 years and a day old today. In celebration of its 15th birthday, Google announced the release of new features on the popular emailing service. But before we get into that let’s take a trip down the memory lane.

For those who had access to a computer and the internet back in 2004, you probably know that emailing was dominated by the now-defunct Hotmail and Yahoo Mail services. When Google launched Gmail that year, it began as an invite-only service.

How did Gmail become so popular so fast?

On its launch, Google provided Gmail users with free 1GB storage; cloud storage. Compared to the competition in the market at the time, this offer was enough to draw in users in their millions.

However, Google maintained Gmail an invite-only service for as long as it could; up to 2007. That led to Gmail being sort after like a banned drug in the black market. People were buying the invites from eBay and there are unconfirmed reports Gmail invites trading was rife in the dark web.

The 1GB free storage on Gmail was so attractive, and back then that was a lot of storage space. These days, Google has bumped that to 15GB free storage. The competitors Hotmail and Yahoo Mail failed to re-strategize and are now either extinct or completely extinct; who uses Hotmail?

The new Gmail features marking its 15th Birthday

The 15-year-old plus Gmail comes with improved Smart Compose feature to help you auto-complete your words and sentences. A feature that is highly appreciated when typing on a mobile device; these devices small touchscreen are never quite comfortable to type long sentences and paragraphs on.

For that reason, a better Smart Compose is always welcomed. In addition to that, you can now schedule your email. As it works out, you can compose an email and set the time you want it to be sent out. As Google puts it in a report:

Smart Compose, which tries to autocomplete your emails as you type them, will now be able to adapt to the way you write the greetings in your emails. If you prefer ‘Hey’ over ‘Hi,’ then Smart Compose will learn that. If you often fret over which subject to use for your emails, then there’s some relief here for you, too, because Smart Compose can now suggest a subject line based on the content of your email. With this update, Smart Compose is now also available on all Android devices.

iOS users will have to wait a little while longer to receive the update that comes with the improved Smart Compose. The new Smart Compose now include more languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.

This only proves Google know too much about you

Not to be Snowden, but with such a Smart Compose feature that can even auto-write email subject for you. Google must really know everything about it; they read your emails. Otherwise, how else will the AI algorithm in the form of Smart Compose do write relevant subject headline base on the content of your emails?

Then again, if you don’t mind and have nothing to hide. Have fun with that!